A TROUBLESOME bottleneck threatens to undermine all the hard work of health-care workers and others to respond to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Reports from across the country reveal dire shortages of personal protective equipment, including masks, chemical reagents needed for testing and other supplies essential to coping with an expected onslaught of illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been reduced to suggesting scarves and bandannas where masks are unavailable.
The dimensions of the supply problem approach wartime in size and scope. No one was prepared for a pandemic; now everyone must shoulder extra effort. The government has estimated that if the pandemic lasts a year, 3.5 billion respirator masks may be necessary to protect health-care workers and patients. The United States has about 12 million N95 respirators and 30 million surgical masks, with an additional 5 million N95 respirators that may be expired. This is not enough. Already, at major hospitals in Seattle and the District, mask shortages have become so acute that doctors and patients are being asked to reuse them, not dispose of them as previous guidance from the CDC recommended.
At a Los Angeles emergency room, doctors were given a box of expired masks and when they tried to put them on, the elastic bands snapped, the New York Times reports. At Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan, doctors were informed they were down to one week’s supply of respirator masks. Continue reading.